Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion is taking the first steps to a personal and party makeover in the wake of this week's punishing losses in Quebec by-elections.

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion listens to a question after making a speech in Montreal, Sept. 20, 2007.

By:Susan DelacourtOttawa Bureau, Published on Fri Sep 21 2007

OTTAWA–Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion is taking the first steps to a personal and party makeover in the wake of this week's punishing losses in Quebec by-elections.

Dion is candidly admitting that his own image needs polishing and, as well, it's believed he's getting ready to name a new Quebec lieutenant, possibly MP Denis Coderre, a former immigration minister.

Coderre, who says he's just happy to be a loyal soldier and is not looking for a promotion, was a strong supporter and Quebec organizer for Michael Ignatieff, the runner-up to Dion in last year's leadership contest.

By putting Coderre in the job to replace the current Quebec lieutenant, MP Marcel Proulx, Dion would be sending a significant message to Liberal troops to shut down any talk of tensions with Ignatieff's old supporters.

It's that kind of talk, which surfaced last weekend in advance of the by-elections, that is threatening to hurl the Liberals into another long spell of internal feuding and an even longer spell in the opposition wilderness.

"It's pure speculation," Coderre said in an interview yesterday when asked about reports he was ascending to the lieutenant's job when Dion shuffles some of his MPs' responsibilities in a few weeks. "I'm not looking for anything."

Dion is working hard this week to show that he and his party have learned lessons from the by-elections, in which the Liberals lost their traditionally safe riding of Outremont – the NDP's Thomas Mulcair took it for his party – and collected less than 10 per cent of the vote in the other two ridings, which were won by the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois.

In an interview with Radio-Canada on Wednesday night and again in encounters with reporters yesterday, Dion says he's realized that he has to do more to let Quebecers and Canadians see who he really is.

"I'll do so and my party is going to help me, so that you meet the real Stéphane Dion ... by really putting forth my personality and explaining what I am," Dion said yesterday. "People have to know me."

In the Radio-Canada interview, Dion said too many Quebecers still viewed him as a former cabinet minister instead of as a future prime minister and that up to now in his political career, he's dwelled more in the ideas part of politics than the personality aspects. "I hesitated to put myself in the foreground of the debate," he said.

"I think a lot of people in Quebec think I am not pro-Quebec, it's as simple as that."

Coderre said it was courageous for Dion to make that admission on TV and he believes that voters need to see politicians capable of acknowledging their shortcomings. That said, though, "the leader in no way is an issue here," Coderre stressed.

Coderre says he's already thinking of how to do the post-mortem on the by-elections in an organized way, plotting the problems on a grid and systematically working through what needs to be fixed. He said he's happy with the job Proulx is doing as lieutenant and will help give him the tools he needs to do his job better.

On Wednesday, staff from Dion's office met with Liberal MPs' staffers, in what was reportedly a frank and sometimes tense exchange over lack of communication among Liberals on Parliament Hill. The main message to the Official Opposition Leader's office, according to staffers who attended the session, was: "You are not listening to us."

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